We are very excited to offer Outdoor Adventure sessions to all children.
Outdoor Adventure sessions follow the ethos of Forest Schools which is based on a fundamental respect for children and young people and for their capacity to instigate, test and maintain curiosity in the world around them. It believes in a child’s right to play; the right to access the outdoors (and in particular a woodland environment); the right to access risk and the vibrant reality of the natural world; and the right to experience a healthy range of emotions, through all the challenges of social interaction, to build a resilience that will enable continued and creative engagement with their peers and their potential.
Our Outdoor Adventure sessions are based more on the process of learning than they are on the content – more on the ‘how’ than the ‘what’. This means that our sessions step out of the limitation of planned activities and venture into the realms of the unplanned, unexpected and ultimately unlimited. Children are given encouragement to direct their own learning and this, coupled with the fact that they are greatly stimulated by the dynamic nature of the outdoor environment, which is an infinite source of smells, textures, sounds, tastes and visual stimuli, leads to children who over time have an increase in their self-belief, confidence, learning capacity, enthusiasm, communication, problem solving skills and emotional well-being.
Our children undertake a range of practical activities and carry out small achievable tasks, teaching them how to work as part of a team and also how to work independently. They are physically active a lot of the time and therefore their stamina improves as they progress through the Outdoor Adventure sessions.
Children and Staff alike really embrace the Outdoor Adventure sessions which follow a different story theme each week and so far have enjoyed talking about and making animal habitats; making clay animals on tree bark; observing and learning about how fires are made safely; planting plants in our sensory garden; making shelters; making boats out of bark, twigs and leaves, and making musical instruments out of twigs, stones and leaves. As our sessions progress, the list of exciting activities will continue to grow!